“Just hang on. Don’t move.”
Somewhere above her, she heard Angel cry her name again. She prayed the child was safe because she was in no position to help her at the moment.
The rope cut into her flesh where she gripped it so tightly. But she welcomed the pain. Pain meant she was still alive. And as long as she was alive, she still had a fighting chance. She’d been in tight places before and survived. She could do it again. They both could.
But the rope was giving way. She could feel it.
“Slide your hand up over mine, Melanie.”
She glanced at Lassiter. His gaze was fixed on her, and something in his eyes…
Dear God…
Her heart started beating so hard she could scarcely breathe. She shook her head.
“Just do as I say,” he said quietly.
“No! I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. It’s the only way. The rope won’t hold us both. Without me, you can climb back up.”
Tears stung her eyes as a terrible pain stabbed her heart. “I won’t let you do it. If one of us falls, we both do.”
“That’s not how it works.” He slid his hand from underneath hers even as Melanie desperately tried to cling to him. But he was stronger than she was. And determined.
He hung by the rope now with one hand.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t do this.”
He gazed into her eyes for the longest moment, and then he let go of the rope and plunged to the valley below without a sound.
MELANIE COULDN’T MOVE. It was all she could do to cling helplessly to the rope.
Lassiter was dead.
She squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to think about it. Trying not to remember the look on his face, that glimmer of emotion in his eyes before he let go.
In the moment right after he’d fallen, it would have been so easy to let go and follow him into the abyss. But even in her darkest moments of despair, Melanie had never been willing to give up on life. And she wouldn’t do so now. She wouldn’t let Lassiter’s sacrifice be in vain.
But it hurt. And the pain would soon become unbearable if she gave in to it.
So she didn’t give in to it. Instead, she summoned the memory of Lassiter’s voice, and the sound of it in her head spurred her courage. You can do it, Melanie. You’re a survivor just like me.
One inch at a time. That was how she would do it. That was how she would get to safety because that was how she lived her life. One step at a time. One day at a time…
The struggle to pull herself up put more pressure on the rope. Melanie could feel it giving, but she refused to look up or down. She thought about Angel and she just kept climbing, even when she could feel the stitches in her wrist also giving way.
And once she made it to what was left of the bridge, she hauled herself up, taking only a brief moment to draw in a gulp of air before she crawled across the tilting floorboards to safety.
Collapsing on the ground, Melanie buried her face in her arms. She had a feeling that at any moment, the shock and adrenaline would wear off and she would start screaming. She would start screaming and never be able to stop. But right now all she felt was numb. And that was a good thing because she still had to find Angel.
“Párate, ramera,” a male voice said over her.
It was all she could do to lift her head. She found herself surrounded by half-a-dozen heavily armed soldiers.
One of them poked her with the barrel of his rifle. “¡Apúrate!”
Melanie dropped her head back in her arms, not even bothering to answer him.
“He said get up!”
Melanie knew that voice, too. She turned her head and watched as the crowd of men parted and Blanca stepped through. She was dressed like the others—boots, camouflage gear and the black beret of the rebel. She wore a gun strapped to her waist and a rifle slung over one shoulder.
Walking over to Melanie, she nudged her with her rifle. “If you don’t get up, one of my men will shoot you where you are.”
And if it wasn’t for Angel, she just might let him, Melanie thought.
She struggled to her feet. “What do you want?”
Blanca gave her an insolent sneer. “From you? Nothing. I would just as soon put a bullet in you myself. But Señor Bond is not paying me to bring you in dead.”
“Bring me in where?” Melanie forced the tremor from her voice. She wouldn’t give Blanca the satisfaction. “Where’s Angel?” she demanded. “Is she okay?”
“I told you before, the girl is not your concern.”
“Where is she, dammit? Tell me—”
In the blink of an eye, Blanca whipped out her handgun and shoved the barrel underneath Melanie’s chin. “You are in no position to make demands. I am in charge here.”
And relishing every moment of it. Melanie’s head was forced back, but her gaze never left Blanca’s.
The woman’s smile was deadly. “It would be so easy to kill you. And it would bring me nothing but pleasure. You and your kind make me sick. You come here to work in a Third World medical clinic so that you can go back home and have something to talk about at cocktail parties. So that you don’t have to feel guilty about the decadent lifestyle you lead. You know nothing about my country. You know nothing about my people. And a week after you return home, you will care nothing about Angel. You won’t even remember her.”
“That’s enough moralizing for one day, I should think.” Bond stepped through the circle of soldiers to walk over and calmly shove the gun away from Melanie. “You know the rules,” he said to Blanca. “She’s not to be harmed.”
Blanca gave him a look of pure hatred. “I’m a capitana in the People’s Army. I suggest you show some respect.”
“And I suggest, Captain, that you show a little restraint.” He turned back to Melanie. “Don’t worry about the child. She’s safe and no harm will come to her as long as you cooperate.”
Melanie gave him a look that rivaled Blanca’s. “What do you want from me?”
“What do I want from you? I want your silence, Melanie. You’ve been asking far too many questions. Trying to uncover matters that must remain secret. Think of the problem as having a hole in a dam. There’s just a trickle of water at first. Nothing to worry about. But one question leads to another. One memory prompts another, and soon the hole becomes bigger. Soon the water is rushing through so quickly the dam is in danger of collapsing. The only way to stop that from happening is to repair the hole before it’s too late.”
He was talking about brainwashing. Reprogramming. Taking away her memories again. Nausea pooled in the pit of Melanie’s stomach.
Bond gestured to the soldiers and two of them grabbed her while a third tied her hands behind her back. She winced as the rope came into contact with her newly opened cut. “You need to come with me now,” Bond said.
And the memory broke through the haze in her mind like a starburst. Suddenly Melanie knew exactly where she’d heard Bond’s voice before. You need to come with me now.
In her mind, she saw him clearly as he walked across the backyard toward her swing. He was dressed in a long coat with a hat pulled down over his face.
She stared at him in horror. “It was you. You’re the one who took me that day.”
“See?” He lifted his shoulders. “Too many memories. Too many questions.”
A white-hot rage filled her. “Where’s my father?” she screamed. “What have you done to him?”
“Your father is dead, Melanie. He died a long time ago.”
Chapter Fourteen
A few minutes later, they emerged from the dense foliage onto a runway that had been hacked from the rain forest. A plane, engines revving, waited nearby.
In the few minutes it had taken to arrive at their destination, Melanie’s shock had faded and grim reality set in. Lassiter was dead.
What was it he’d said to her earlier? When it was over, it was over.
But it shouldn’t have ended like this
. It shouldn’t have ended at all. Because somehow, some way, Melanie couldn’t let go of the notion that they were meant to be together. They’d been brought to Santa Elena for a reason.
And now Lassiter was dead.
Dead.
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. If she let herself cry, she wouldn’t be able to stop, and she couldn’t fall to pieces. Not yet. She had to find Angel and protect her from Bond.
He withdrew a thick packet of bills from his pocket, and as he and Blanca stepped away from the others, two of the rebels grabbed Melanie’s arms, dragged her over to the plane and shoved her inside. She saw Angel strapped to a stretcher at the back and tried to rush to her side, but navigating the close confines of the cabin with her hands bound was difficult.
Bond climbed into the plane behind her, and someone outside closed and locked the hatch. “The child is fine,” he said as he took a seat. “She’s been given a mild sedative to help her sleep during the flight. Now why don’t you sit down and I’ll help you with your seat belt? Once we’re in the air, I’ll untie your hands.”
Melanie sat down because there was very little else she could do. “You got what you wanted. I’m coming with you. You don’t need Angel. Let someone take her back to the clinic.”
“I can’t do that. As long as you’re concerned for her safety, you’ll be a lot more receptive to what we have to do. And besides,” he added, “if you were to try and escape through a portal, you wouldn’t be able to take her with you.”
As the plane began to taxi, he reached over and fastened her seat belt. Melanie cringed away from him, then turned to stare out the window. As they lifted off the ground, she felt a terrible darkness descend on her.
Lassiter was dead. She couldn’t get that last moment out of her mind. She couldn’t forget what he had been willing to do to save her.
She tried to fight off her grief and isolation as she turned back to Bond. “Where are you taking us?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Melanie.”
Montauk.
She closed her eyes.
“There’s no need to be frightened,” he said. “As I said, neither you nor the child will come to any harm as long as you cooperate.”
“And I’m supposed to accept your word on that?”
“I’m afraid you must.”
Her voice trembled with suppressed rage. “I find it a little hard to trust a murderer.”
He lifted his brows. “Murderer?”
“Yes, murderer. You were responsible for my father’s death, and maybe even my mother’s. And now you’ve killed Lassiter. And I swear to God, I won’t rest until I find a way to make you pay.” She almost choked on the words, her chest was so constricted. She turned her head so that Bond wouldn’t see the tears that were suddenly pouring down her face.
“You were in love with him,” he said softly. “I guessed as much that day you came to the compound. But in a few days, your grief will be gone, Melanie. You won’t even remember him.”
She whipped her head around. “And that’s supposed to be a comfort to me?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it would help you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with the deaths of your parents. And I didn’t cut the ropes on that bridge, either. I suspect Blanca may have had a hand in that.”
“You’re innocent of everything, I suppose,” Melanie said contemptuously.
Silently, he reached over and loosened her ropes.
Pain shot up her arms as she stretched her muscles. When she brought her hands around to her lap, she saw that one of them was covered in blood.
“Here, let me take a look at that,” Bond offered.
Melanie snatched her hand away. “I’d bleed to death before I’d let you touch me.”
He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket. “At least wrap it up. Here, take it,” he urged.
Melanie hesitated, then snatched the handkerchief from his hand and wound it around her wrist.
“If you didn’t kill my father, then what happened to him?”
“Your father was a very dangerous man.”
“Dangerous to whom? You?”
“Dangerous to our government. Dangerous to the world. Dangerous to all of mankind.”
She looked at him as if he was a lunatic. Which, she suspected, was not far off the mark. “What are you talking about?”
“Maybe I should start at the beginning,” he said. “Your father was a brilliant quantum physicist. The work he did for us involved probability waves and the role of the conscious observer.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Bond merely smiled. “As far back as the early part of the twentieth century, subatomic experiments demonstrated that electrons have the intriguing ability to behave as both particle and wave. It was concluded by many that this duality, or the particle-wave paradox, was related to the observer. In other words, if the physicist conducting the experiment looked for a particle, he saw a particle. If he looked for a wave, he saw a wave pattern. It was therefore concluded that objects are not objects at all. They are only perceived as such when a conscious observer collapses the probability waves around them.”
“The Copenhagen Interpretation,” Melanie said.
Bond lifted his brows in surprise. “That’s correct. The Copenhagen Interpretation has been challenged with some success over the years, but your father continued to believe and prove that there is an undeniable relationship between consciousness and the universe. With thought we are capable of experiencing our present reality, our past reality and our potential future reality. Unimpeded by space or time, thought opens the door to unlimited possibilities.”
“I guess I’m living proof of that, aren’t I?” she muttered. As Lassiter had been.
“You should be very grateful, Melanie. You’ve experienced what few people can even imagine. People would kill to have your ability.” He leaned toward her, his eyes gleaming. “You are one of the enlightened ones.”
“Forgive me if I don’t feel particularly enlightened,” she said. “Most of the time, I feel like a freak.”
He frowned. “Have you ever heard of the Illuminati? According to legend, they were an ancient people who achieved such a high level of mind expansion that time travel, interdimensional travel and even interplanetary travel were possible. But this stargate technology was lost when rationality became the central method of consciousness. Reason demanded proof. Therefore that which could be studied and quantified took precedence over the subjective.
“But we’ve entered a new millennium, and traditional sciences are in a state of flux, beleaguered by issues of objectivity, secondary properties and consciousness. The collapse of science as we know it is evidence that we’re on the brink of a new world-view. Montauk is only the beginning of a new epoch, Melanie, one that will bring the birth of a new matrix and a new human. You, and the others who have been through Montauk, are the elders.”
A thrill weaved up her spine, but whether it was dread or excitement, Melanie couldn’t say. “That doesn’t tell me what happened to my father.”
“He began to have doubts about what we were doing, you see. To question the morality of playing God, as he put it. When he found out about the human experiments we were conducting, he threatened to go public with everything we’d discovered. We couldn’t let that happen. Can you imagine the chaos it would have created? Mankind wasn’t ready to accept what we’d discovered. There would have been mass panic. Economic collapses. Countries would have gone to war to obtain the secrets of Montauk. Secrets your father carried in his head.”
“If you were afraid he’d go public, why didn’t you brainwash him? Why didn’t you make him forget what he knew like you did with the others?”
“Because we needed him to finish his research. His work was at a critical stage. We had to find an incentive that would induce him to continue.”
“So you kidnapped me,” Melanie said bitterly.
“Yes. We’d neve
r used a test subject as young as you were at the time, and the possibilities—and problems—were intriguing. And you were amazing, Melanie. The speed with which you were able to accept altered states of consciousness and new realities was phenomenal. You didn’t just accept them, you embraced them, so much so that we had to program limitations in order to keep track of you. Even Dr. Joseph Von Meter was impressed.”
“And my father knew about this?” she asked in horror. “He knew what you were doing to me?”
“He tried to stop it, but he couldn’t. As long as we had you, he was completely under our control. And his work continued. But then one day, he disappeared. We sent teams of our soldiers all over the world looking for him, but somehow he always managed to elude them. We were worried about what he might do, with whom he might share our secrets. Desperate men do desperate things. But you were our ace in the hole, Melanie. As long as you were at Montauk, we didn’t think your father would dare go public.”
“Then why did you release me?” Melanie asked. “Why did you take me back home?”
“Because after four years, we ran the risk of having your father conclude that he had nothing to lose by coming forward. So we sent you home to your mother because we knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to insure your continued freedom.”
The levels of manipulation were mind-boggling. And sickening. Melanie found she was trembling in outrage, for herself and for her father. “You never saw him again?”
Bond shook his head. “He changed his appearance, took on a new identity. We heard several times that a man matching his description had turned up in Cartéga. I used to go down there myself and search for him, but I never found him. It became almost an obsession with me.
“Then a few years ago, I found evidence in Santa Elena that he’d died of complications following emergency surgery. I tracked down the death certificate and even the doctor who’d treated him. But I didn’t trust either one. I suspected his death was a hoax. So I kept going back, hoping that your father, if he was still alive, or Dr. Wilder would somehow tip their hand.”
“Dr. Wilder?”
His Mysterious Ways Page 16